everyone loves a good villain
by lightsthatguideus
Summary: Twenty five things you don't know about Sebastian Smythe. / Character-study, along with S/B.


_A/N: Okay, so this is...kind of...I don't know, I've been watching too many thrillers lately. But Sebasitian is such a deep character, and I love him like a pig loves shit (I overuse that expression.) I hope that you enjoy it, and pretty pretty please review!_

_Warning: This fic contains some violence, references to child abuse, and bullying. Please be aware._

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_"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it."_

-_Martin Luther King, Jr_.

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1. His full name is Sebastian Henry Smythe. His mother's last name was Reardan, his father's last name is Jacobs. It's a last name that caused confusion and questions and out-loud wondering that was never answered to, so he sort of stopped asking.

2. He was born January 14, sometime in the middle of the night. He doesn't know who was there, and who wasn't, and for a while, he didn't know why his father could never remember his birthday. But there's a picture, something stashed away within his mother's secrets, that he only saw once, and in it is a man that he doesn't know, and beside him is a woman who's too happy and pretty to be his mother. They're holding a child who's all-too familiar to him, so he acts like it's not him.

3. He loves his mother more than anything. Sort of. She's the only thing he would cry at for if it were to die, and she was the only thing that cried for him every time he was on the brink of doing so.

4. When he was four, he thought he was going to be a brother. And he almost was, he guesses, when he does the math years later when it doesn't matter anymore. He was never outright told, but he noticed-he saw the bulging stomach, and the worried glances, and he eventually comes to realize, by the time it was too late, that it wasn't really his brother. Even if it had been his father's son.

5. When he was four, he watched his brother die. Or, at the very least, felt it. Hiding under the kitchen table, plugging his ears, feeling the repercussions of slaps and punches and a woman begging, until an unsettling feeling comes over, and the moment he unplugs his ears, all he can hear is crying and a muffled voice, and a woman praying for mercy.

6. The first time his father ever laid a hand on him, he was six. It was in mid-June, and somewhere along the lines his mother's gaze left him long enough for him to wander into the garage. It was a comforting place in Sebastian's eager mind, with the smell of wood and oil, and the crumpled pictures of memories not so long ago tacked to the walls.

He'd seen a bucket filled to the brim with blue paint, the kind that he and his father had used to paint his desk. They'd laughed; it had been a good time. A positive feeling came from the bucket. He stuffed his meaty little hands in it, tracing his fingers along the walls, decorating it with the pictures of his mind. And it wasn't until the garage door opened and he saw a figure so dark that it flipped the insides of his stomach that the blue began to fade into red.

7. He believes in God. It's a bit of a strange thing (Sebastian was a strange boy, his father would mutter when he peered upon the pictures of crossed lines that meant nothing to him.) He doesn't even know where the thought of God Himself came to him-his parents weren't especially religious, and he'd never even seen the inside of a church, much less the outside of one.

But it's when they're driving on a random December 25, a normal day for them, when he sees a family through windows. A picture-perfect family that's so sappy looking and postcard ready even his father notices them, whether there was a sneer on his face or not. But Sebastian decides that if that's what God would give, he'd be willing to make an exception.

8. He pitched for his third-grade baseball team. Not that he was especially good at it, but at the very least, he was slightly above mediocre, and it was enough for his father to pat him on the back after games and for his mother to give him something like the ghost of a smile. And one night, he hit a home run-not just any home run, he reminds himself. The _winning _home run. And his father picked him up, swung him around, and bought him a cone from McDonald's.

9. One night, after practice when Sebastian was tired and feeling too sports-lazy to get out from his bed, he heard his mother laughing. Somewhere, down in the depths of their house, she was giggling like the little, pretty girl he pictured her as once being, and he went to bed with a smile on his face.

10. One night, after practice when Sebastian was tired and feeling too sports-lazy to get out from his bed, he heard his mother's voice for the last time.

11. He never asked what happened to his mother-he doesn't look for her, doesn't attempt to call her...he does get one explanation, several days later, when a package arrives at the front steps. Sebastian's alone in the house, his father either working late or drinking early, and he goes ahead and opens it. Inside is his glove, the one that he hadn't noticed had been missing. There's a single note on it, written on the back of a magazine ad-_Seb left glove in car. _

In between two of the fingers is a ring.

12. When he's ten, going on eleven-several months after the box, several months after he threw the ring into the back woods and walked away from it with his back turned-a man comes to the front door. He's tall and handsome, and he makes Sebastian feel warm and protected, and his name is Pete (Officer Johnson, he says at first, but call me Pete.) His father sends Sebastian up to his room for a while, and all he can do is keep his ear close to the crack of the door and listen to the undecipherable muttered words.

He runs like hell to his bed when he hears footsteps come up the stairs, and he's nothing short of relieved when it's only Pete. He immediately expects him to ask him varied questions, such as the _where were you, _and_ do you know, _and_ is there anything strange_, like on the TV shows. But instead, he gives him a smile and simply asks him if he's happy here. He says yeah, I guess. He asks him if there's anything he'd like to tell him. Sebastian says no, thanks. Finally, he asks him the big question-does he know where his mother is. He says no, I don't. Then Pete sighs, and tells him that he does.

13. He doesn't see the newspaper article until ten days after it's printed, when he finds it in his father's drawers. He doesn't want to read it-instead, he looks at it with empty eyes and only sees the mutilated body of his mother, and beside it, the picture of a man named John Smythe.

14. The first time he saw his birth father, he saw him as a murderer.

15. He's fourteen, no, wait, fifteen-years after, when the scars have healed and his father gets too old to hit him anymore-that he falls in love. Well, not _in love_-no one's first love is actually their true love, he thinks. But Patrick Salvo might've been. He was tanned, and he was sweet, and he had bright, blonde hair. That's all he really remembers about him. Apperance wise.

The thing he remembers most about Patrick Salvo, though, is weeks after the infatuation began, and he's cornered in the back of the school. It's Patrick that stands closest to him, several of the school's finest and toughest behind him. He looks at Sebastian with strange eyes, that look horrid on the outside, but there's a look of near pity and something of apology as he calls him a "fag", and lands a punch in the middle of his face.

16. Patrick Salvo was in the hospital for two months, because if there's one thing Sebastian is an expert on, it's pain, and how to get other people to feel it. He learned from the best.

17. He stops believing in God, then, because the last thing Patrick said, before Sebastian threw a punch into his stomach, was a weak, meaningless, "God hates fags." And that's when Sebastian decides maybe this "God" isn't so fucking great after all.

18. The last time his father hits him wasn't all that long ago, really. It was before you knew him, and before he knew Blaine, or Kurt, or David Karofsky. It's mid-afternoon, and his father asks him idely why he doesn't have a girlfriend yet. Sebastian says, I don't know. His father says, you should get one, handsome boy like you. Sebastian says, maybe I don't want one. His father says, why not.

And that's went the eight words come out of Sebastian's lips, and before he knows it, his aging father tosses him from his seat like a rag doll, and he's too shocked to bother fighting back.

I was in love with Patrick Salvo, Dad.

19. He leaves home that night, and the first place he goes to is Pete's-because one time, long ago, on a round visit, Pete told Sebastian he was lonely. And if there's one thing Sebastian needed, it was somebody who would want him.

20. The first time he sees Blaine Anderson, it's in a flurry of first days and passing bys, and he doesn't even talk to him, much less know his name for months to come. But he smiles a bit at his face, even though looking at him only brings back a feeling of shock and horror, and "God hates fags!"

21. He doesn't hate his father. And not the one that sent him out of the house of pain, but the one that killed the thing he loves the most. He doesn't blame him for anything. He fell in love, and he got his punishment for it. It's a cycle Sebastian knows well.

22. He does eventually meet his father, though. He visits him, and he doesn't even know who Sebastian is (he doesn't tell him, but he does have the picture stashed in his bag.) What he does do, is ask him about his mother, questions about when she was young. The answers are muddled and are either stretched or lies, but Sebastian doesn't care. All he sees in front of him was a man who loved what he loved, and a man who's eyes were all-too familiar.

23. He hates God. Hates the life that he gave him, hates the eyes that he has, hates the father that he grew up with, the artificial placeholder.

24. But the thing is, he loves God, in a sense. God gave him Blaine Anderson, and that's something of a payback.

25. He knows who he is, who he's going to be. John Smythe was a murderer, Lizzy Rearden Jacobs was an adulteress, Oliver Jacobs was violent. And Sebastian's on the brink of all of those things-this he knows. But if there's one thing he won't bother with, it's all the family blood-because it might get on his blazer, and he has to keep pristine for Blaine, doesn't he?

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_ If anyone didn't get the backstory, here's a brief summary-Sebastian's step father (Oliver Jacobs) and his mother (Lizzy Rearden Jacobs) were married, and then she have an affair with John Smythe, and gets pregnant with Sebastian. She kicks out John Smythe, and life goes on a little bit. She goes back to her adulterous ways, gets pregnant again. This time, Oliver beats it to death. Eventually, Lizzy leaves the two, and goes back to John, who kills her in an act of rage. And so and so._

_That was very dark. Wow. _

_Well, thanks for reading anyways! Do review, pretty please._


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